Table of contents for August 2024 in Practical Wireless

PW readers include many who share their lives with pets, many of them with dogs of one sort or another. Many enjoy working special event stations (SES) as well! International Dog Day is celebrated annually on 26. August. For several years now this special day has been marked by Special Event Station stations on the amateur bands. It began with Hanz YL3JD on the air with YL1DOG. Last year the number taking part had grown. Chris G5VZ says, “Here in UK I put on GB0DOG. After a brief chat about the event David G4YVM was given SES GB4DOG. This year – 2024 – is looking to be the biggest year yet. With European stations again taking part and several American operators joining in, too.” Caryn KD2GUT is coordinating a US team, activating K2D…

The picturesque Ratlingate campsite near Carlisle buzzed with excitement and curiosity over the weekend of 7 to 9 June, as the North Fells District Scout Camp unfolded. Approximately 70 scouts, along with their leaders and volunteers, gathered for an event filled with adventure and learning. Among the many highlights of this weekend was the presence of members from the Workington & District Amateur Radio Club, who were invited to facilitate a series of communication-based activities for the young attendees. Hands-On Radio Communication: The club members set up a mast and dipoles for 80m and 40m and had use of an Elecraft K3 and hand-held radios to introduce the scouts to the fascinating world of amateur radio. They provided hands-on experiences that allowed the youngsters to engage directly with radio equipment,…

g0fuw@gqrp.co.uk Just as a quick recap, Part 1 of this series provided the basic project overview. Part 2 covered the construction details for the VFO, then Part 3 covered the receiver section. Part 4 was about the changeover, sidetone and RIT sections. This part covers the transmitter section. Combined with the other boards this forms a complete transceiver. There are also some suggestions for boxing it all up to make it look and feel more like a radio, rather than just a collection of PCBs. Transmitter module circuit description Fig. 1 shows a block diagram of the transmitter board. The original SCD transmitter, described in the January 1980 edition of Short Wave Magazine, had a crystal controlled oscillator, a buffer amplifier, a driver amplifier and a power amplifier (PA). In…

roger@g3ldi.co.uk By the time you read this, NFD (National Field Day) will be over of course, but did you get involved? If not, why not? NFD has been the ‘centre’ of the yearly contest calendar ever since I was first licensed in 1956. By the centre I mean just about the middle of the year, but also the main event for most clubs. Times change obviously and this view has changed over the years, but NFD still remains my favourite club contest of the year. Perhaps the long-held dream has faded somewhat, however. If I do a momentary time-shift back to 1956, this is how it went in those days: Club meeting for NFD. What receiver can we use? It would invariably end up with a BC348 or similar. Three…

practicalwireless@warnersgroup.co.uk With the peak of the Sunspot Cycle getting ever closer, and some good DX opportunities on 10m, why not take advantage of it and give your chances a boost with this simple directional beam, which is cheap, compact and easy to build? I am fortunate to have four elements on 10m courtesy of my Spiderbeam Yagi, and boy do they make a difference compared to a dipole or vertical! But not everyone has the space or money for such an antenna, so this month I wanted to create a project within the reach of everyone, using just a few hand tools, that would be cheap and effective on this wonderful HF band. So, I set out to build a 10m Moxon beam that anyone could copy. It took me,…

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practicalwireless@warnersgroup.co.uk I recently watched a YouTube video in which a radio amateur had so many antennas to choose from, and so many receivers to pick from, that he had installed a patch panel in a large rack. Each antenna was terminated at this panel to a BNC connector, and similarly the input to each receiver was terminated at this panel in the same manner. A number of short BNC-to-BNC cables were used to patch the selected antenna to the chosen receiver. One day I may get to such a situation but until then here is one way of getting antennas and receivers connected. Connectors In my shack I have standardised on using BNC connectors for almost everything. The coax of every antenna is terminated in a BNC connector and every…

keith.g4miu@gmail.com I have mentioned in previous columns that my antennas had been taken down for tree work and that while reinstating them I have been bearing in mind I didn’t want anything too permanent as we intend to ‘move on’ in, hopefully, the not-too-distant future. The last HF wire antenna I had been using before it was taken down was a 66ft (20.11m) long doublet. This ran from points A to B in Fig. 1 (I had an attachment point in a tree at location B) and was fed with a run of 450Ω ladder line. Position C is where my 33ft LMA mast is located Like many readers I have experimented with various types of wire antennas over the years but the good old Doublet is one of those…

gw4vxe@icloud.com If, like me, you enjoy seeing how propagation changes from day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year, then I’m sure you will have found this year an interesting one. Of course, this year we are heading towards Solar Maximum, which brings various factors into play – increased chance of auroras and, seemingly poorer Sporadic E (Es) based propagation, but of course, the chance of F2 as well as F2+Es and F2+TEP type propagation. Terrestrial weather also forms an input to the Es and tropo propagation that we experience at VHF/UHF and I think it’s fair to say that most areas of western Europe, at least, have experienced a very unsettled spring and early summer this year. If you’re interested in the effect that…

hb9any@gmail.com After the introduction of the top-of-the-range valved Model EA12, followed by the acquisition of Stratton & Co by the Marconi Company in 1965, no new Eddystone receivers were developed specifically for radio amateurs. But operating as Eddystone Radio Ltd, the Birmingham-based company went on to produce a wide range of high-performance solid-state receivers for professional service. Some of these interesting receivers can now be procured at rallies, swap meets and on eBay at very attractive prices. The Eddystone 1990R series are general purpose VHF/UHF communication and laboratory receivers that were produced from 1975 to 1984. The 1990R/1 model covers 25-235MHz in five ranges, while the 1990R/2, Fig. 1, and the 1990R/3 have seven ranges that extend the coverage to 500MHz to include the 12m, 10m, 6m, 4m, 2m and…

teleniuslowe@gmail.com ARRL staff and directors, Fig. 1, had a bit of a nightmare few weeks in May-June. In mid-May many radio amateurs around the world noticed that the ARRL’s ‘Logbook of The World’ (LoTW) was no longer working. (LoTW is the massive database of amateurs’ logs that can be used to verify contacts for awards such as DXCC.) This turned out to be one of the first indications for amateurs that ARRL had been the victim of a major cyber attack. ARRL announced that “On or around May 12, 2024, ARRL was the victim of a sophisticated network attack by a malicious international cyber group. We immediately involved the FBI and engaged with third party experts to investigate.” ARRL added that “Many of our services and programs have been impacted…

practicalwireless@warnersgroup.co.uk Earlier this year, in our regular series The Face behind the Call, we visited the shack of Stony Stratford-based radio amateur Martyn Baker G0GMB, Fig. 1. In addition to his home radio activities, Martyn is also Coordinator at the RSGB’s National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park, a role which recently earned him the RSGB Founders’ Cup in recognition of his dedicated work at the NRC over many years. There, he has built up an over 50-strong team of volunteers who last year spent 9,000 hours over 351 days explaining and demonstrating all aspects of amateur radio to nearly 80,000 visitors. I was delighted when Martyn extended an invitation for me to visit the NRC, Fig. 2, and meet some of his colleagues. My chosen date turned out to be…

Send your letters to: Practical Wireless Letters, Warners Group Publications plc West Street, Bourne, Lincs PE10 9PH E-mail: practicalwireless@warnersgroup.co.uk Magnetic Loop Antennas Dear Don, I enjoyed reading this month’s PW and I was particularly interested in the articles and points raised about HF Mag Loop antennas. Out of sheer necessity I have been using these antennas since 2016; driven down this route in the old QTH by severe planning restrictions and covenants applying to antennas mounted on the house. They are definitely not the panacea of HF antennas by any means but, and it’s a big but, when the choice is no HF antenna at all, and a discrete HF Mag Loop that will conform to insane planning restrictions, then they will get you on the air with HF. And…

BUILDING KANGA’S ‘ROOSTER’ TRANSCEIVER: Richard Constantine G3UGF describes a project that is fun to build with a professional and ‘Practical’ outcome. REVIEWED, THE ICOM RC-15: Georg Wiessala looks at the new IC-R15 wideband receiver from Icom. THE 2024 PW 70MHz CONTEST: Colin Redwood G6MXL has the rules and advice on taking part. VALVE & VINTAGE: Philip Moss M0PBM takes a look at the classic CR100 receiver. 1 +1 +1 = 5, +1 = (ALMOST) 7: Ken Ruiz, ZB2MD says “Get more than you expected from a multiband dipole”. BOOK REVIEWS: The editor catches up on some of the excellent books from the RSGB. There are all your other regular columns too, including HF Highlights, World of VHF, Antennas, Vintage TV & Radio, the Face Behind the Call and Data Modes…